This invention relates primarily to electronic video gaming machines that allow the player to play both poker games and slot reel games. In one or more versions, the invention relates to electronic video poker games that are based on poker hand rankings and allow the player to discard and replace unwanted cards with replacement cards. The present invention has many versions with the common thread being that whatever cards are held by the player from a first hand are duplicated or reused into other hands and these cards are held. Additional cards are dealt as replacement cards for those cards discarded from the first hand and to complete the other hands and the player is paid for winning poker hand combinations. In other versions, slot symbols are used in the place of the playing cards and the player selects the slot symbols to hold from the first row and the held slot symbols are duplicated or reused in the other slot rows. The reels are respun to complete the slot rows and the player is paid for winning slot combinations.
One version of the present invention is a method involving a card game in which the player makes a wager to play one or more poker hands which are displayed as pay lines in a display that looks like a multi-line slot reel machine. In one embodiment of the present invention, three adjoining horizontal rows, each having five card locations, are displayed to the player. The reels are spun a first time and one row of playing cards, such as the center row and representing a first hand, are displayed to the player. The player selects none, one or more of the face up cards from the first hand as cards to be held. The cards that are held are duplicated or reused from the first row into all of the other rows, such as the top row and bottom row which adjoin the center row. The reels that do not have held cards are then respun so that additional cards are displayed into the first row and all other rows so that each row is a five card hand. The poker hand ranking of each five card hand along each pay line which is being played by the player is determined. The player is then paid for any winning poker hands based on a pay table and the amount of the player""s wager. The pay lines may comprise any suitable configuration of cards as long as there is only one card used from each card position regardless of which row the card is displayed in.
Another version of the present invention is a method in which slot symbols are used in place of the playing cards. The method of play is the same as the playing card version and the player is paid for winning slot symbol combinations instead of poker hand rankings. Again, the pay lines may comprise any suitable configuration of slot symbols as long as there is only one slot symbol used from each reel position regardless of which row the slot symbol is displayed in.